Keep No Record of Wrongs
Dr Bob Rotella is widely regarded as one of the most influential and successful sports psychologists in the world. He’s worked with golf greats, Rory McIllroy, Padraig Harrington, Justin Thomas, along with Hall of Famers Pat Bradley and Tom Kite. Outside of golf he has consulted for top MLB, NBA, NFL teams and corporate groups.
There is a powerful story in Rotella’s book, How Champions Think that challenged how I think about mistakes and should encourage your life & leadership.
He told a story of the great mindset and thinking of the greatest golfer of all-time, Jack Nicklaus.
Nicklaus was speaking at a Georgia Tech men’s golf banquet and in his speech had said to the audience that he never three-putted the last hole of a tournament or missed a putt inside three feet, ever.
A member of the audience challenged Nicklaus saying, “With all due respect sir, that’s not true. I’ve seen you miss inside of three feet.”
Nicklaus sharply responded. “You’re wrong. I’ve never missed inside three-feet, ever!”
Rotella had this to say about the exchange and the mind of his long-time friend, Jack Nicklaus.
“I have no doubt that Jack sincerely believed what he said. He has that sort of mind. He forgets mistakes. He remembers good shots. He refused to feed his subconscious mind with a lot of thoughts about mistakes. He understood there was no reason to relive and remember a missed putt.”
This week’s edition of How To Flourish is about forgetting mistakes, the power of our subconscious mind and one of the hallmark requirements of love.
Are you the type of thinker that repeats, and relives failures, disappointments, and missteps and tries to convince yourself it’s all done in the name of “learning?”
Many high performers are self taught to move on from success quickly for fear of “resting on our laurels.”
Yet many high performers don’t give themselves the same experience of moving on from mistakes.
We replay them.
Relive them
Study them
Ruminate over them.
If not careful we can replay a failure so vividly that our mind convinces our body we are actually in that experience again.
Our heart rate rises, your palms begin to sweat. The feeling of shame and embarrassment begins to overwhelm us.
I remember having a conversation with a high performing leader in pro sports who expressed he was having a hard time sleeping for months on end. At the time of falling asleep his mind would replay a painful experience of getting fired from his dream job in the NBA.
He would recall with great detail the betrayal he felt from his boss, the awkwardness of the HR rep coming in and the anger and frustration of exiting the building without the opportunity to defend his case.
Long after the car pulled out of the parking lot, his mind was overwhelmed with the experience. That’s because of the great connection between our mind and body.
On another occasion an athlete I work with shared a story of overwhelming physical tightness, elevated heart rate and increased nerves/anxiety when playing against a team he had had a bad game against in the past. He had rehearsed his mistakes against that team so vividly in his mind that the very appearance of the team caused a physical reaction.
When we replay mistakes and failures and past unpleasant experiences our body is learning. Our mind is learning, and our nervous system is learning. And reliving failures isn’t a great teacher if our goal is to perform well in the same scenario in the future.
Keeping An Inaccurate Record
Dr. Rotella had this to say, “The champion doesn’t care about keeping an accurate record in his own mind. He thinks and remembers in ways that will help him achieve and maintain a confident self-image.”
But what about reality? Isn’t it delusional to only remember successes? Does replaying failures on loop keep us humble and grounded?
Your physiology may suggest it keeps you humiliated more than humble.
Humiliated people often become egotistical people. Moving about the world with humility requires security and quiet confidence. Let’s not confuse inner humiliation with humility because the two inner realities produce wildly different performances and leadership qualities.
Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson frames it really well by saying, “Prepare like you’ve never won, perform like you’ve never lost.
This is intentionally keeping an inaccurate record, not to deceive but to perform.
Love Keeps No Record of Wrongs
Most of the athletes and leaders I work with love what they do. They love working on their craft and pursuing excellence. They are driven, ambitious, and often very hard on themselves. They maintain a very high standard for themselves and often struggle with mistakes and perceived failures.
I’m often asking them (and myself), “Well what does loving the craft and the pursuit of high performance actually require of us?”
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 is often quoted at weddings as a framing of the commitment two people are making to each other. It of course is in the context of marriage and a loving commitment, but it also can provide some helpful framing for the high performer who loves their craft.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
There’s one line in there that reminds us what love requires in the ups and downs, successes and failures of life in the arena,
It keeps no record of wrongs.
The times in my life I felt most insecure, most caught up in overthinking and gridlock, most afraid of bad outcomes, most likely to shrink back instead of being authentic were times I had a very vivid record of wrongs.
When you’re standing over the shot, what value does a vivid memory of all the shots you’ve missed have?
We can harbor past missteps, and failures. Preserve them in our minds as we pretend they add value for our process, or we can begin to forget them, release them, and move on from them.
What would it look like to actually keep no record of wrongs in your own craft? No vivid memories of your failures, mistakes and missteps.
If we truly love our craft we’ll recognize where it may be time to move on from that past mistake.
Recently after Rory McIlroy won the Masters on the heels of many recent failures in the final rounds of major tournaments, Dr. Rotella had this to say about his client,
“Anyone who is great at their craft has mastered the ability to forget. There’s a great Mark Twain quote, “The inability to forget is infinitely more devastating than the inability to remember.” He goes on to say, “We go to school and it’s all about remembering, in sport, it’s all about forgetting.”
Part of staying the course in life will undoubtedly be about learning from mistakes. An even larger part is learning how to let go of mistakes.
What past failure do you need to let go of today? If you truly love your craft, keep no record of wrongs. Just keep going.
Love is great at moving on.
Stay The Course,
